Soaking in Friday the 13th's game from the sidelines of Klockner
Stadium, the Monday Midfielder was left wondering what everyone
else was thinking: How?

And this was after spending three days embedded in Durham with
access to Duke's week of practice and preparation. Now, that's not
to question coach John Danowski and his staff. If you saw any of
the game, you know the Blue Devils were well prepared.

But 12 of 13? Despite a consistently inconsistent season —
one in which Danowski said his team was still looking to establish
its identity during a seven-game win streak — the Blue Devils
did it again. No matter where or when, no matter the dynamic,
personnel, system, scheme, site or venue, Duke has had Virginia's
number. It's more than coincidence, right?

Down on the sidelines, Danowski approached me between the third
and fourth quarters. Duke held a 9-2 lead. Danowski's expressions
said it all: two shrugs of the shoulders, coupled with an opening
of the hands toward the sky, and a semi-smirk.

Sometimes you just don't know.

(It's not just Virginia, by the way. The Devils also have gone
14-1 against Tobacco Road rival North Carolina since 2005.)

Slowing Stanwick

LaxMagazine.com's three-episode video documentary from inside
Duke's Murray Building — the team's campus headquarters
— will debut later this week, breaking down all the
behind-the-scenes details of Friday's game. Be sure to check it
out.

But for now, everyone is wondering how Duke defended Steele
Stanwick and held the reigning Tewaaraton Award winner scoreless
for three quarters — Stanwick tallied one goal and two
assists in the final period.

Said Virginia coach Dom Starsia: "They didn't really slide early
to Steele. They just let the kid that was covering him stretch out,
push him, make him catch the ball on the endline with somebody on
his hands and work for everything that he got."

Relying largely on 6-foot-4, 205-pound sophomore defenseman
Henry Lobb — 6-foot-4, 211-pound sophomore Chris Hipps also
dueled with Stanwick, mostly in the second quarter — Duke
pressed out on Stanwick behind the cage. Lobb was on an island,
one-on-one, with the nation's most dangerous player, but his length
and athleticism allowed him to stay on Stanwick's hips and
gloves.

Knowing Stanwick is a feeder first and scorer second, the
defense didn't slide when he dodged and instead focused on covering
the cutters in front by denying the passing lanes. In the
pick-and-pop situations where Stanwick is so deadly, Duke didn't
pre-determine a switch, opting to fight through the screen if
possible or allowing a short-stick to guard Stanwick if necessary.
This forced defenders to make on-the-fly decisions in the heat of
the moment and made communication critical.

It's an aggressive — potentially risky — style, and
one that would be difficult to sustain for 60 minutes. If Virginia
held for extended offensive possessions Duke likely would have been
forced to frequently rotate between Lobb and Hipps to keep them
fresh.

"We just didn't have the gumption to be able to really make them
work at the defensive end and make them pay for the pressure they
were putting on us," Starsia said.

It's probably unfair to focus all the attention on Stanwick and
Lobb, though. One player doesn't do the job on Stanwick — by
himself. Virginia has so many weapons and Duke had to play great
team defense to hold Virginia to a season-low five goals —
and even if it was Stanwick's second-lowest scoring output of the
season, he still led the Cavaliers with three points.

Keys To The Game

The way we see it, there were three other key elements to Duke's
victory:

- Transition goals. Duke wasn't afraid to push
the ball, evidenced best by back-to-back goals by defensemen Mike
Manley and Luke Duprey. Jordan Wolf and Rob Rotanz also had goals
in unsettled situations.

- Ground balls. Before Friday, both teams had
allowed their opponent to pick up more ground balls than they did
on one occasion. Duke won the battle 39-37, including 22-16 in the
second half. "I would say that's their strength overall: loose ball
play around the midline," Starsia said.

- Related, CJ Costabile won 10-of-19 faceoffs
but impacted the game more than the numbers say around the faceoff
X, as he scooped up nine ground balls. "If he doesn't win the draw,
he can still create turnovers and cause some havoc," Danowski said.
"We always know that Virginia has such a great, athletic team that
there's going to be a lot of bodies flying in the faceoff game on
the wings, and from both boxes — the offensive and defensive
box. We made that a priority all week."

Four games received ESPNU television treatment, while CBS
College Sports Network, Big Ten Network and Time Warner Cable
Sports each aired two. The Atlanticpublished an article titled "Will Lacrosse
Ever Go Mainstream?" that didn't directly answer the
headline's question, but claimed "it would be foolish to overlook
lacrosse's potential." And there were several record-breaking or
noteworthy games fans attended across the country...

No. 9 Maryland at No. 3 Johns Hopkins: A
Saturday night capacity crowd of 8,500 — including NFL
coaches Bill Belichick and John Harbaugh — filled Homewood
Field, lining the fence around the stadium. It was Hopkins' first
home sellout since 2004.

Navy at Army: More than 10,000 fans flocked to
Michie Stadium on Saturday for the Star Game to watch one of the
most intense, hard-fought games of every season — the battle
between the service academies. Passion poured out the seams in West
Point.

No. 7 Duke at No. 1 Virginia: A season-high
7,234 fans packed the gulls at Klockner Stadium on Friday night,
dotting the three grassy berms surrounding the sides of the playing
surface with orange and blue.

No. 18 Bucknell at No. 11 Lehigh: More than 800
standing-room only onlookers joined 1,200 others for Lehigh's 9-8
defeat of Bucknell, as Kyle Feeney scored the game-winner with 14
seconds left. The 2,096 fans shattered the previous Ulrich Sports
Complex record of 1,645 set in 2008.

Ohio State at Michigan: The Battle at the Big
House attracted 4,458 Midwesterners to witness one of the greatest
rivalries in sports.

Plus, more than 6,000 were in Charlotte for the ESPNU Warrior
Classic at American Legion Memorial Stadium, and 4,000 went to
Bethpage (N.Y.) High for UMass-Drexel.

This weekend's big crowds got us thinking... How do 2012's
attendance figures stack up against previous years? You know The
Monday Midfielder loves crunching numbers. If not, check out
our previous foraysinto the world of statistics.

How does 2012 compare? Regular-season, on-campus home attendance
for the past six seasons (2006-11) has been fairly consistent. Each
year averaged somewhere between 1,200-1,300 fans per game. And per
The Monday Midfielder's calculations — using publically
available data on conference websites — through this point in
the season, schools are averaging about 1,150 fans per game.
Sometimes you go in expecting to find something and you turn up
nothing new.

So what gives? Well, there are still games remaining on the
schedule. Big games and rivalry games, at that. As the weather gets
warmer, more and more fans will fill the seats. And seemingly an
increasing number of games every year are played outside college
venues — instead at neutral sites.

As pointed out by Lacrosse Magazine colleague and
photographer extraordinaire John Strohsacker, there might be a
connection to draw here between home attendance, revenue and
success for Division I men's lacrosse programs. In a world where
some schools don't charge admission costs, the correlation might be
challenging to prove; whereas in men's basketball, for example,
ticket sales account for the single-biggest revenue source for many
programs.

But what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Does winning
attract big crowds? Or do big crowds help with winning? More
likely, it's a self-fulfilling cycle.

What steps can lacrosse take to help boost attendance? One
thought, courtesy of Danowski: Follow in football's footsteps and
dedicate different days of the week to different levels of play.
Why not have high schools play Friday nights and colleges Saturday
afternoons? Don't compete for the same fan bases. Let everyone
enjoy the best the sport has to offer and not have to make a
choice.

One team that might be buying into the philosophy? Notre Dame,
which has played five of its 10 games this season on Sunday. The
Fighting Irish, by the way, have seen one of the biggest attendance
boosts in the last six seasons. They averaged 950 fans per game in
2006, and have averaged 2,108 per game in 2012.

The 10 Spot Countdown: Stats to Stew

Haven't digested enough numbers? Here are a few more...

10 – Shots taken by Mark Matthews —
none of which found the back of the net — in Denver's 12-9
loss to Loyola on Saturday, snapping a 39-game goal scoring streak
dating back to 2010. The Tewaaraton Award nominee scored 107 goals
during the streak.

9 – Overtime periods played by Yale this
season, after Friday's 11-10 quadruple overtime defeat of Brown.
Earlier this year, the Bulldogs lost in five extra sessions to
Princeton in the longest game in school history. "We had been here
before," Yale defenseman Peter Johnson said. "We were a little bit
more comfortable, and if anything, it made us want this win a lot
more because we know the feeling of losing that deep into a game.
We were used to getting kill off of kill, defensively. We were just
ready to keep killing them as long as it takes."

8 – Faceoffs, out of 12, won by Syracuse
close defenseman Brian Megill against Rutgers in the Orange's 19-6
victory Saturday. Megill, who entered the game having taken only
nine draws all season, helped Syracuse control possession and
record a season-high scoring outburst after struggling at the X
most of the year. "Coach (Kevin) Donahue told me I was going to get
the nod yesterday," Megill told the Syracuse Post
Standard. "I was pretty jacked up. I was thinking
about it all night, what move I would do first. I was able to find
my comfort zone, and the wings did a great job boxing out for
me."

7 – Number of weekends since Cornell star
Rob Pannell suffered an undisclosed ankle injury that put him out
indefinitely. Don't look now, but all Cornell has done since a 9-8
overtime loss to Virginia — its first game without Pannell
— is rattle off six straight wins, including last week's 12-6
defeat of Syracuse. Initial reports after Pannell's injury
estimated a six-to-eight week recovery period. So could Pannell be
on the brink of rejoining the Big Red? Maybe a triumphant Senior
Day return Saturday against Brown? Or a date with Ivy League foe
Princeton, on the road, lingers April 28.

6 – Goals scored by Maryland in the
second half of Saturday's 9-6 defeat of Johns Hopkins, compared to
one goal allowed. When Chris Boland scored 43 seconds after coming
out of the locker room to start the second half, it looked like the
Blue Jays would cruise. Not so fast, my friend.

5 – Of the game's last six goals scored
by Loyola in Saturday's 12-9 defeat of Denver. Held scoreless to
that point on six shots, Eric Lusby broke through with a pair of
unassisted goals in the final 20 minutes, while Nikko Pontrelli,
Justin Ward and Mike Sawyer tacked on one apiece to keep the
Greyhounds' unbeaten season alive.

4 – One-goal games played by Lehigh in
2012, including Saturday's 9-8 nailbiter against Bucknell.
Interestingly enough, the Mountain Hawks have still managed to
outscore their opponents by a composite margin of plus-44
(123-79).

3 – Times this weekend I asked myself
about Maryland's fascination with and affection for its state flag,
much like Lacrosse Magazine editor Matt
DaSilva. Why? But then, I thought, the Terps' PRIDE
uniforms were pretty awesome. (As were the Johns Hopkins'
throwbacks.)

2 – Fouls called in the Maryland-Hopkins
game Saturday night, both of which went against the Terrapins. From
this vantage point, it was a relatively clean game, but the
officials did a good job of letting the teams play.

1 – Split decision on which team should
rank as the nation's No. 1. After Virginia and Johns Hopkins lost,
the question was asked: Who's the new top-ranked team? Well, both
UMass and Loyola, apparently. The Minutemen and Greyhounds received
193 points each in the latest United States Intercollegiate
Lacrosse Association (USILA) coaches' poll.